Category Archives: IT news

Facebook was brought a class action by shareholders due to IPO issues

An American Federal judge sentenced two lawsuits against Facebook as an class action. The lawsuits claimed that Facebook concealed the worries about its prospects of future growth before its IPO was made in May, 2012.

mark

“Facebook was brought a class action by individuals and institutional investors who suffered a great loss for Facebook IPO of $16 billion,” said Robert Sweet, the judge from Manhattan.

This verdict was made on December 11 which was strictly confidentail. Sweet announced this verdict on this Tuesday.

The other defendants of these lawsuits are including Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, its COO Sheryl Sandberg and other seniors.

The class action is in the process of lawsuit. But the company felt such verdict was lack of evidence. It has conflicts with those cases have been duly handled.

Its shareholders claimed that Facebook concealed the inside performance prediction concerned the mobile business before it went on IPO. It did not receive much ad revenue on mobile business then. It affected the prospects of Facebook’s future growth. However, it has notified the consignees in person, indicating the consignees should decrease the prediction.

Facebook became a listed company on May 18, 2012. Its issue price of IPO was $ 38. It decreased to $17.55 by September 4, 2012 and stayed the break state in one year.

Finally, Facebook’s share price increased. Its closed at $102.26 on Tuesday. It means Facebook’s market value reached $303 billion.

Wealth Changes for Worlds Five Richest: Bezos up $31 billion

According to the statistics of Bloomberg Billionaires Index( BBI), the assets of World’s 400 rich men shrank $19 billion in 2015. This is the first time that BBI received annual decrease.

bbi

Ken Fisher, the co-founder of Fisher Investments claimed that the worries to oil surplus, weak consumer spending and the slow economic development in developing countries are the reasons for their assets shrinking.

BBI showed that Carlos Slim suffered the greatest asset shrinking. The share of America Movil SAB declined by 25% this year so his fortunes declined $ 20 billion.

The fortunes of Warrent Buffett declined $11.3 billion as Berkshire Hathaway encountered the first annual deficits since 2012.

Bill Gates, World’s Five Richest, co-founder of Microsoft whose asset declined $3 billion.

There are also some richests make profit t this year. Amancio Ortega added asset up $12.1 billion, becoming the second richest. The gap narrowed down to $10 billion between Ortega and Bill Gates.

The biggest winner went to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. His fortunes added $31 billion, reaching to $59 billion.

BBI indicated that the total fortunes of World’s 400 richest reach up to $39,00 billion. Such figure is over each country’s GDP except America, China and Japan.

Till December 28, 2015, there are 28 Chinese billionaires in the list of Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Their total fortunes reach up to $256 billion.

Twitter beat Facebook in Revenue Growth

The growing trends of Facebook and Twitter share prices run opposite directions in 2015. The increase of Facebook share indicated its excellent executed performance. The decrease of Twitter share was related to lower user growth. It derived some uncertain reasons.

twitter

Even though the share price of Facebook is higher than Twitter’s in 2015, it was beaten by Twitter revenue growth. The mobile ads revenue growth stimulated an increase of Twitter’s total revenue. Its Q3 revenue growth increased by 58%(YOY), while Facebook’s Q3 revenue growth increased by 41%(YOY).

It is apparantly to Twitter that it received quick revenue growth. Each quarter of Twitter’s revenue growth is beyond the analyst’s prediction. Take Q3 for example, Twitter’s EPS was $0.1 in accordance with non-GAAP calculation, increased by 10 times(YOY).

Why investors feel disappointed with Twitter performance? Twitter sequential Monthly Active User Growth was only 1% in Q3. The investors wish to know whether its revenue growth decreases if Twitter fails to promote high-level user growth.

On the contrary, Facebook user growth went beyond analyst’s prediction. Facebook sequential monthly active user growth was 4% during Q2 and Q3. Its ability of attracting new users is impressed. Its montly active users increased from 1.49 billion to 1.55 billion.

In the meanwhile, Twitter monthly active users increased from 316 million to 320 million. The investors feel confident with Facebook’s future.

Jack Dorsey admitted the difficulties for user growth. The management group is working to solve such problem. If he succeeds, the investors might obtain more confidence for Twitter’s development.

Google Ventures reorganize global investments:dissolve European business

Besides launching the Search Engine, Network video and innovative product, Alphabet also owns the subordinate business
Google Ventures. Google Ventures set up fund and business in Europe. It invested on the startups in Europe as well.

As reported, Google Ventures did not make a great success in developing business in Europe. As its some investments have
been revoked, its senior management group left the firm as well. Google Ventures will restructure its global investments.

It is reported that there are only two co-founders left in European office of Google Ventures.

One of the founding members of European Google Ventures, Eze Vidra left ventures business and Google, reported Business
Insider.

Vidra made great contribution to its European business. He promoted the Google Shopping in Spain and some other Google
products in other markets. He established the first Google campus in London, British.

Vidra planned to leave Google by the end of 2015. He posted a farewall blog on Christmas Day. However, he did not mention
what he would do next. He claimed that he would focus on the startups. Peter Read, another Google Ventures co-founder for
European business left the company last year. He did not reveal the reason why he left the company.

The Financial Times reported that there were disagreements inside the European business section. Google Ventures only
invested on six projects so far, even though the capital of European ventures reached $ 100 million.

What is more, most of its investments are limited in UK despite it named European fund of Google Ventures.

A few months ago, Google invested on Resolutions Games. However, the investment subject is from American Google fund
instead of its European fund.

It is reported that Google Ventures decided to end its European investment funds. They will be managed by global investment
fund.

The spokesman of Google Ventures claimed that the company will set up a global investment fund in 2016 to bring more
flexibilities for its development.

Evan Williams: Webpage fades out as an intermedium of content distribution

Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, current CEO of Medium claimed that Webpage becomes fading out as an intermedium of content distribution. The Blogger, Twitter and Medium he created are aiming to help users to post their opinions and views on the internet.

williams

Williams stated the future of medium are Twitter, Facebook and Medium platform when he was interviewed on Re/code Decode show. He said:” The distribution of medium are converged. It becomes meaninglessness to post contents on webpages.”

He assumed that brands and users will be valued, but the future platforms will be focused on their work. They will aim to provide high quality contents and richful social elements.

Williams still works as a member of Twitter board of directors. He mentioned why the board of directors was initially against Jack Dorsey to work as Twitter’s CEO while he works for Square CEO at the same time. The board of directors made compromise finally.

He claimed that they doubt about the future of Twitter, what achievements Dorsey will have, whether his appointment will be a show.

They hoped Dorsey could work as Twitter CEO for full-time. But the board of directors made compromise to agree with Dorsey working as Twitter’s CEO.

Canonical revealed Ubuntu obtained over 1 billion users

One of the top leaders of Ubuntu project, Dustin Kirkland stated in a open letter to Ubuntu Community that Ubuntu obtained over one billion users in the world.

ubuntu

Phoronix reported previously and indicated that Ubuntu wont be able to obtain 200 million users by the end of 2015. However, the statistics reported by Kirkland showed a large amount of people use Ubuntu with willingness or unwillingness in the world.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu once estimated it would obtain 200 million users by the end of 2015. This figure concerned the personal PCs or laptops installed the Ubuntu operating system.

The situation made a great change since then. Besides millions of Dell, HP, Lenovo and Asus laptops are installed with Ubuntu operating system, the servers of IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, Lenovo, Quanta are also pre-installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu is compatible with OpenCompute project.

The problem we concerned is no one could calculate all the Ubuntu users. Ubuntu does not demand each user to register Ubuntu which is different from Apple, Microsoft and Google operating systems.

Dustin Kirkland collected all the public records as he could, including servers, the Ubuntu that deployed in the Cloud, Ubuntu mobiles and the enterprises which used Ubuntu.

The result surprised the public. It turned out there are over one billion users using the Ubuntu operating system in some or other devices. Among its users, most of them are unaware of using Ubuntu operating system.

China Merchants Bank becomes the first one to support Apple Pay

Apple announced that Apple Pay will be bringing into Chinese market days ago. It worked with China UnionPay and 15 mainstream Chinese banks. The specific details of the banks will be revealed soon.

CMB

CMB officially announced that it will support Apple Pay that a new mobile payment mode with speediness and safety.

It is said that users who carry CMB deposits card or credit cards marked with UnionPay, they would add their bank cards to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch to full enjoy the Apple Pay service.

CMB stressed that security and privacy are the cores of Apple Pay. When the users add the credit cards or deposit cards on their devices, their banking details won’t be stored on the devices or Apple server.

In fact, the banking details will be distributed to a Device Account Number, and save into a Secure Element chip after being encrypted. It notifies the one-off, unique dynamic security code for authorization.

Apple Pay is available on iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch among the retail stores that support this service.

Among the applications to use Apple Pay for payment, it is supported by iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4 and iPad Pro.

It seems that there will be more banks join the Apple Pay service. Time will tell us all.

Yahoo four acquisitions will be valued at $1 billion after business split-off

Marissa Mayer has been criticized for spending $3 billion to realized continuous acquisitions. Those acquisitions did not improve much its business. FBR Capital lately analyzed that the current value of those acquisitions are under it paid for the acquisitions.

The real value of four acquisitions made under Mayer’s leadership are far below their acquired payments. Yahoo spent $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr in 2013, while FRB Capital estimated it values at $770 million now. While the values for Brighthroll, Flurry and Polyvore have been shrunk a lot.

tumblr

This is good news in comparison with other 40 acquisitions in the past three years. FBR Capital estimated that those 40 acquisitions are worthless now.

FBR Capital analyzed that if Yahoo splits off those four acquisitions and sell out, the income might help to meet the shareholders’ demand.

William Bird analyzed the Yahoo Display on Monday, if Yahoo separately sells out those its business sections, they will be worthed at over $3.2 billion. Yahoo Display includes Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and other startup acquisitions it made in the past three years.

Bird felt that the four acquisitions could be valued at $1.4 billion among $3.2 billion. The operation and financial standing of Tumblr is not as good as its rivals, but its users keep growing. The revenue of Brighthroll is over $100 million now, while Yahoo spent $640 million to acquire it then. Flurry and Polyvore both develop well in their fields.

Bird said Tumblr might worth more in the view of correct buyers. It could provide first class product innovation.

He felt that it could attract more bidders if Yahoo sells out those business separately. Only a few companies could afford several billion to acquire the whole Yahoo outright.

Goodbye Dubai: Yahoo closes the last office in the Middle East

According to the reports from foreign medias, Yahoo is now working on shutting down the business in the Middle East. Dubai office, the last office in the Middle East will be closed. 50 employees will lose their jobs.

yahoo

The confirmed source revealed that they received several emails from the unemployeds and they feel embarrassed. Yahoo has confirmed this news.

On the one hand, it made apologies to those who lost jobs.On the other hand, it confirmed to have the dismission done by the end of next April.

Yahoo claimed that it would keep Dubai office when it carried out the staff reduction plan last year. Judging from this news, the staffs work in Dubai office seem to stand this suffer this time.

Yahoo acquired the Arabic social networking website Maktoob.com in 2009 in order to explore the Middle East market. It is hard to believe that it ends up with failure 6 years later.

Yahoo obtained 400 employees and 65 million users in the Middle East, including Amman, Jordan, Cairo and Egypt.

The leadership of Mayer is controversial. Its business scale narrows down under her leadership. The most respected senior executive Dawn Airey left the Yahoo early this year to challenge another job.

It was previously reported that Yahoo investors hoped Mayer to leave the team or suggested the firm split off its business. The future of Yahoo is alarming.

Monthly active users for Google mobile Chrome doubled

Google mobile Chrome obtained double monthly active users in the past year, increasing to 800 million.

chrome

The growth of using mobile Chrome mostly comes from its Android system. However, Chrome is compatible with iPhone and iPad at the same time. The continuous popularity of mobile Chrome is significant to Google as it faces much pressure from Microsoft in the browser business.

Google announced in May that Chrome browser users were over one billion, but it did not reveal the specific data of desktop users and mobile users. Chrome comes as a default browser on most Android devices. Users are able to download it on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Windows PC.

Google announced at the Chrome Dev Summit which was held last month that its montly active users for mobile Chrome reached 800 million. This figure was double on year-on-year basis.

According to the data of Net Applications, Chrome is the most popular mobile browser, accounting for 40% of the market share. It only obtained 27% market share in January. The growth of Chrome might contribute to the continuous production of Android devices.

IDC claimed that quantity of Android devices come to the marke will increase to 1.16 billion sets in 2015. There were 1 billion caming to the market last year.

In the meanwhile, the market share of Safari browser decreased from 43% to 36%.

Microsoft persuaded Windows 10 users not to install Chrome browser, on the contrary, it indicated the importance of Chrome. Microsoft Ede and IE browsers are only able to use on its own OS. Windows Phone only obtains about 5% of market share in mobile browser market.

Googel mobile Chrome keeps reachnig more active users. It seems Google wish to manage the mobile browser market.